Mike Yoder

Chief Photographer

I grew up in Kansas City, MO, where I attended Grandview HighSchool.

I received a bachelor's degree in communication from Goshen College, IN. in1978. Since I had earned an FCC radio license in school and spun actual records for a late night radio music show I initially considered a radio career. Instead, a photo internship at the Elkhart Truth newspaper in Elkhart, IN. convinced me to pursue a career in photojournalism. I choose Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, David Letterman's alma mater. Prior to completing my master's degree in journalism however, my first wife and I formed a bluegrass band and with 2 other musicians and toured Europe for six weeks with a folk dance troupe. In 1983 I received my degree and with a portfolio of photographs in hand I started looking for a job. Several months later I was offered a staff photography position atthe Journal-World.

In my spare time I play guitar and sing with two area acoustic bands, The AlferdPacker Memorial String Band and Three Bean Salad. With the two bands I've recorded six albums of music and traveled extensively throughout the state to perform. I've even been know to write songs for the bands from time to time and managed to win a couple first place songwriting awards at the annual Walnut Valley Music Festival in Winfield, KS. You can sometimes find my on long-distant bicycle rides. I've done the Bike Across Kansas two times, a four-day bike ride through the Black Hills of South Dakota twice and a recent Cottonwood 200 spin through the Flint Hills.

In 2008 I married Karen Seibel, a long-time Lawrence resident and local yoga instructor. We live in an 1880's house in Old East Lawrence and have been re-modeling and slowly bringing the house back to shape. We have three cats, two cars, one screened porch and tons of books. We enjoy traveling and then creating books from our trips. Currently we have self-published books on trips to South Dakota, the Sandhill Crane country in Nebraska and the hot springs area of New Mexico. In 2007 I published a book celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Vinland Fair in Douglas County after spending nearly 25 years documenting the community event.

A photographer went to a dinner party, where he showed his photographs. The lady of the house said, “Those are nice pictures; you must have a great camera.” He said nothing, but when leaving, he offered the following compliment to the woman: “The meal was very nice; you must have great pots and pans.”

From my years of experience as a photographer, I’ve learned that a person’s facial expression or body language can result in a photograph that either simply documents objective visual evidence of the person, or instead may capture a more expressive moment, transforming the scene into a memorable record of a life experience.

My photography checklist for traveling to South Korea included two camera bodies, three lenses, a laptop, iPhone, a padded floor seat, a pocket point-and-shoot camera and memory cards, including an Eyefi Mobi Pro SD memory card.
What I forgot to pack were pastel-colored clothes. What?

Ian Stepp remembers visiting his aunt’s house as a kid, where he’d play classic games like Duck Hunt and iterations of the Mario Brothers saga on the family’s trusty old Nintendo Entertainment System.
Now pushing 30, Stepp is still a fan of the now-classic video games that in recent years have spawned a thriving culture and industry capitalizing on the nostalgia of grownups who coveted Nintendo game systems as kids in the 1980s and 90s.